Srimati Urmila devi dasi ACBSP - ISKCON School North Carolina
last updated 30th May 2005
 

Sri Giri Govardhan - May 2005

We carefully removed the paint that was there when we got Him, now He looks even more beautiful.

For the almost eleven years we've been having a gurukula in Hillsborough, North Carolina (written 2001), we've taken the blissful duty of organizing the Govardhana Puja festival as the temple always observes it on a weekend rather than the actual day. We've made an annual "ritual" of it for the schoolchildren. About a week before the day, we start building a paper mache hill by putting paper dipped in flour and water over a wire form that's stapled to a piece of wood. The students make and decorate this hill every year. The whole devotee community is invited and we have a big "potluck" feast. I do this because I thought that *someone* should have a festival on the actual day and, mostly, as a wonderful memorable thing for the kids to make and decorate a hill and have a festival that was "theirs." I had no idea or intention of developing a personal relationship with Govardhana. I was just trying to do my duty.

On Govardhana Puja of 2000, our GBC, Bir Krsna Swami, came to our gurukula festival early as usual. But this time he kept insisting that I should worship an abandoned Govardhana sila. The devotee who had left Him had gotten the sila with the permission of his guru and many Brijbasis, but had since fallen into various types of difficulty. I must have asked Maharaja twenty times, "Are you *sure* I should worship him?" Then Govardhana came that day for the festival.

Your servant, Urmila devi dasi

---